


Six Months Earlier

by Cinnamon_Anemone



Category: Iron Man: Armored Adventures
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-11
Updated: 2015-11-15
Packaged: 2018-05-01 02:23:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 5,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5188517
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cinnamon_Anemone/pseuds/Cinnamon_Anemone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony recovers from the plane crash that damaged his heart and took his father from him, and struggles to come to terms with the aftermath.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Tony Stark does not want to wake up.

Conscious gnaws at him. It circles him like a scavenging animal, impatient and inexorable. _Go away_ , he thinks. _Let me sleep_. He does not want to wake up, because _awake_ has stiff sheets and the smell of antiseptic and the high-frequency whine of fluorescents and memories and— no.

He would rather stay here, in the comforting emptiness, where all that can be just another bad dream. Where he can still be Tony Stark, 15-year-old genius, sleeping in too late after staying up too late in his lab inventing some new technological marvel to show off to his dad. Where he aches because he spent too long hunched over his workbench, and the strange pressure over his heart is some gadget left lying on his chest after he fell asleep tinkering with it, and his dad is waiting for him downstairs in the kitchen with a huge plate of their traditional Saturday waffles.

But consciousness wins out eventually, and Tony opens his eyes to bland beige hospital walls.

Rhodey glances up from his book and sees Tony, and his face splits in a huge grin. “Tony! I thought I was going to make it through this year’s whole reading list before you decided to wake up.” He waves the book and laughs. He looks exhausted. “How do you feel?”

Tony’s not sure. _Why does my chest hurt?_ he tries to ask, but it comes out as an unintelligible “Whmmhrr?” And then he sees the thick cord snaking across the bed to the unfamiliar, bulky device attached to his sternum. He tries to sit up, adrenaline flooding his body, and several of the monitors surrounding him begin to beep frantically.

“Whoa, man! Calm down! Relax, Tony.” Rhodey’s hands grip his shoulders and push him firmly back down. “It’s okay. Here, see?” He grabs the device, and it pops free with a click. “It’s just a… like a charger. For your shiny new heart monitor.” He smiles again, but this time it looks strained.

“Heart monitor?” Tony manages to mumble. He has a hard time getting a good look from his supine position, but he disentangles his arms from the blanket and reaches for his chest. His fingers grope blindly for a few seconds, then freeze when they encounter metal.

“Yeah, your heart got messed up pretty bad,” Rhodey says quietly. “But Doctor Yinsen patched you up. They guy’s a little nuts, but he knows his stuff. You’re gonna be fine.”

Tony’s thoughts are sluggish and jumbled thanks to the copious drugs he’s probably on, but he’s not so doped up that he can’t work through some basic logical connections.

“Unless the charge runs out?”

He wishes he hadn’t said that, because now Rhodey looks uncomfortable, and his upbeat façade cracks further. “Man, you are _such_ an engineer,” he says, forcing out a chuckle.

Roberta rescues them from the sudden awkward tension when she steps into the room, trailing a nurse behind her. Rhodey had probably pressed the call button as soon as he saw Tony was awake.

“Hi sweetie,” she says as she sits down, reaching out to stroke his hair with motherly tenderness. “How are you feeling?” Why do they keep asking that? How does he feel? He feels like he fell out of an exploding plane at cruising altitude. _No, no, no_ — but it’s too late, he can’t take the thought back; the floodgates in his mind have opened, and they will never close again.

The beeping monitors pick up their pace again, and he feels a tightness in his chest that has nothing to do with the bandages and the bruises and the cold, implanted metal.

He doesn’t want to ask, he already knows what the answer will be, but a part of him still clings to the hope that more than one Stark had had a miracle hidden up his sleeve. The question comes out as a slurred whisper.

“Dad?”

Rhodey’s hand squeezes his, and Roberta says, “I’m so sorry, Tony.”

If she says anything else, he doesn’t hear it. What does it matter, anyway? Nothing anyone says can change the awful truth in those four words.

Howard Stark is dead, and Tony Stark, 15-year-old genius, is an orphan.


	2. Chapter 2

“Rhodey, there’s no _cable_ on this TV.”

Rhodey drops his backpack on the floor and flops into the chair by Tony’s beside.

“So? Since when do you even watch TV?”

“Um, since being stuck in the most boring room in the world on enforced bed rest for three days. Your mom won’t even let me have my phone. I’m going stir-crazy, man.”

Rhodey looks at the fresh batch of technical sketches scattered all over Tony’s bed and every other flat surface within his reach. “Yeah, I can tell. I don’t know what you want me to do about it, though. I’m not the engineering wizard here, I can’t poke the TV for fifteen seconds and make it get Hell’s Kitchen.”

“It should get cable already,” Tony grumbles. “I think it’s disconnected.”

“Hmm.” Rhodey says neutrally, inspecting one of Tony’s sketches with an unusual level of interest. “What are you working on?”

Tony’s eyes narrow in suspicion. “Solar-powered roller skates,” he says sarcastically. “Did your mom make them cut off my TV?” Rhodey shrugs, still looking at the sketch. “ _Rhodey._ ”

He sighs. “I dunno, maybe.”

“She just doesn’t want me watching the news, does she?” Tony says sullenly.

Rhodey sighs again and puts down the paper. “Yeah, probably.”

“Well, what if I want to watch cartoons or something? I’m _so_ _bored_. Banning TV in the hospital has to be some kind of violation of the Geneva Convention. Why does she get to do that, anyway? She’s _your_ mom, not mine.”

“Don’t be a jackass,” Rhodey says, rolling his eyes. “And she probably told them to cut you off because she knows that you’d end up on CNN within five minutes because you’re too curious for your own good.” Tony glowers. “Seriously, dude, you don’t want to watch it,” Rhodey continues, in a lower voice. “Some of the coverage has been… pretty brutal. Just let it go, okay? Give it a few more days for stuff to cool off.”

Tony looks away. “Whatever,” he mutters, picking at a loose thread on the bedsheet. He wants to be grumpy about the TV. Feeling irritable means he doesn’t have to feel other things. His composure is faltering, and Rhodey picks up on it and hurries to change the subject.

“Is there anything you want me to bring you from your lab to pass the time while you’re off-grid? And _don’t_ say that hoverbike thing, there is no way they’ll let me bring that in here.”

Tony gives a crooked smile. “My tablet, if you can get it. I have some project designs on there that might make things _slightly_ less boring.”

“Cool. I’ll make it happen. In the meantime—” he leans down to rifle through his bag and comes up with four DVD cases. “Raiders, Temple of Doom, Last Crusade, and of course… Crystal Skull.”

Tony groans. “Not Crystal Skull!”

“Ohoho yes,” Rhodey says, grinning wickedly. And since you’re stuck here I can make you watch it _as many times as I want_.”

“You’re a _monster_. You’d better have some more of those contraband candy bars if I’m gonna make it through this ordeal.” Rhodey tosses a Snickers onto the bed.

“They’re not really contraband, you know. There’s a vending machine right down the hall.”

“Shut up. They taste better if they’re not allowed.”

Rhodey snorts. “Dork.”

“Lameazoid.”

“Twerp.”

“Just put a DVD in, dweeb. And if it’s Crystal Skull I’m gonna throw a defibrillator at you.”


	3. Chapter 3

“I’m bored.”

Rhodey groans and drops his textbook into his lap. “Yeah. I know. It’s only about the seven hundredth time you’ve told me this week.”

“Well, I _am_. Soon it’s not going to matter if my heart is okay, because my brain will have melted out of my ears.” Tony tilts his head back and forth a couple times. “Yup. I can definitely hear it sloshing around in there. I lived through a plane crash, and now I’m going to die in this room. Of terminal boredom.” Tony sprawls his arms out pathetically on the bed and rolls his eyes up in an expression of martyred resignation.

“You’re going to die of me _strangling_ you if you don’t stop telling me how bored you are every two and a half minutes.” Rhodey is unmoved by his dramatics. Tony sighs.

“I want to go somewhere.”

“Where do you want to go, Disneyland?”

Tony grins. “Disneyland sounds _great_. See? I knew you’d have my back, Rhodey.”

Rhodey snorts, stifling a smile. “You’re lucky you’re in a hospital bed, or I’d punch you.”

“If I let you punch me, will you get me out of here?” The joke earns him a Look, so Tony drops the humor and tries the Puppy Eyes instead. “Come on, just for a couple hours. I don’t care where. Just somewhere that isn’t _here_. Can’t they give me a pass to go down the street to a McDonald’s or something?”

“You know what the doctors said. You’re still under observation, and you’re supposed to be taking it easy. Anyway, do you really want to show up at a McDonald’s in a wheelchair and hospital gown?”

“Yes,” Tony says promptly, without any trace of irony. Honestly, he’d suffer just about any indignity to get out of this wing of the hospital for a little while.

Rhodey shakes his head. “No way, man. I’m not breaking the doctors’ rules. My mom would ground me for the next twenty years.”

“Rhoooodeyyyyy…”

Rhodey picks up his textbook again, raising it to block Tony’s pleading gaze. “If you start whining, I’m going to take your tablet and leave you here.”

“You _wouldn’t_.” Tony glowers and clutches the tablet to his chest.

“You wanna bet?”

Tony huffs, turns away, and doesn’t respond. Less than a minute later, he hears Rhodey sigh and put his textbook down again. His dejected silence is apparently more compelling than his earlier pleas, because Rhodey then says, “How about the food court in the lobby?”

Tony brightens immediately. “Do they have pizza? Is it better than the cafeteria stuff?”

“Yeah, it’s way better,” Rhodey says with a chuckle.

“I can’t believe you’ve been holding out on me. That’s just mean.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t think pizza grease bombs are on the approved foods list right after heart surgery.”

Tony’s grin has returned, though: he can tell Rhodey’s already caved. “One slice of pizza won’t kill me. I’ll do the rest of your physics homework for you.”

Rhodey shakes his head and closes his textbook. “If my mom finds out, I’m dead meat.”

 

...

 

Twenty minutes later, Tony is polishing off his pizza with almost religious relish. It is _definitely_ way better than the cafeteria stuff. And even if the food court is still in the hospital, at least it’s not his damn room. This little excursion won’t stave off the boredom for long, but at this point, he’ll take anything he can get.

He’s actually having _fun_ , for the first time since he woke up: talking and laughing with Rhodey, almost like this is a real food court and not a hospital one and everything is normal and okay again.

Then blue scrubs and a familiar face remind him where he is. “Crap,” Tony whispers, abandoning the last few bites of pizza crust. “That’s one of my nurses.”

“Do you think she’s looking for you?” Rhodey stage-whispers back.

“I don’t know. But I don’t think she’s seen us. Let’s get out of here before she does.” Rhodey nods and starts wheeling Tony away, trying (with mixed success) not to look conspicuous about it. It looks like they’re going to be home free, but Tony glances over his shoulder as they round the corner, just to be safe. “Dude, I think she saw us! Hit the gas!”

“What?!” Rhodey yelps, speeding up his pace. “Seriously?”

“I don’t know, but we can still beat her back! Push faster!”

“You owe me a _week_ of physics homework for this.” But Rhodey obeys, accelerating to what is certainly an inadvisable speed as they make a dash for the elevators.

Fortunately, one elevator is already on the first floor, so when Rhodey slams the ‘up’ button, the door opens right away. Rhodey yanks the wheelchair inside and frantically presses ‘door close’. When the door finally slides closed and the elevator begins to move, both boys heave a sigh of relief – and start to laugh.

“Was she following us?” Tony asks, through his giggles.

“Couldn’t tell. We’ll have to race her back to the room. If anybody asks, this never happened.”

“Right. Total denial. Stealth pizza.” That prompts another round of snickers, and they’re both still laughing when the elevator opens. “Go, go, go!” Tony says, and they’re off, speeding down the empty hall like they’re being chased by enraged bees rather than a possible concerned nurse.

They take the next corner hard, and Tony lets out a yelp as the wheelchair starts to tip. Before the inner wheels have even hit the floor again, Tony’s eyes widen, and he yells, “Laundry cart!” Rhodey curses and heroically wrestles the wheelchair back under control, just in time to bring them to a screeching halt only inches away from the cart.

There’s a beat of startled silence, and then they both crack up again.

“ _James!_ ”

Just as abruptly as it started, the laughter stops. Both of them freeze as Roberta storms up to them, radiating parental rage. “What do you think you’re _doing?_ ”

Rhodey starts to stammer out an explanation. “I’m sorry, Mom, I—”

“I asked Rhodey to take me to the food court,” Tony interrupts, even though he’s still a little winded from the excitement. “I wanted to get out of my room. It was my idea.”

“I’m not mad at you, Tony, honey. But I would like to know why _you_ ,” Roberta says sharply, turning her attention back to her son, “thought it was a good idea to treat the hospital like a go-cart track. You should know better, James. Tony’s in no condition to…”

Tony slouches in his wheelchair, tuning out the scolding. The whole thing was as much Tony’s fault as it was Rhodey’s, but Roberta is obviously just going to ignore Tony’s attempts to come to his defense. _Tony_ can’t get in trouble, after all – he’s the one who’s sick. He’s the one with the heart implant. He’s the orphan.

So much for his outing. Tony’s good mood is thoroughly ruined.

Instead of listening to Rhodey get chewed out, Tony focuses on getting his breath back. It’s harder than it sounds – he hadn’t expected the short trip to the food court to take so much out of him. He leans forward, fighting back a wave of lightheadedness. He’s breathing heavily, with deep inhales and quick, heavy exhales, and yet he can’t seem to get enough air. That doesn’t seem right. Why can’t he get enough air?

“Tony? Tony?” Tony realizes that Roberta has knelt down in front of him and started talking to him – he’s actually not sure how many times she’s said his name. He’s been too focused on his breathing. “Sweetie, are you okay? How do you feel?” She looks really worried.

“Fine,” Tony pants. “Just— out of breath.” His chest is starting to feel tight.

“James, go get help right now,” Roberta commands, still looking at Tony with concern. Tony wants to argue, but he doesn’t have room for a lot of talking in between breaths anymore. He’s still gulping down as much air as he can, but it isn’t helping, and his heart is thudding fast and hard in his chest, pulsing against the implant.

“Tony, look at me. Just relax, okay? Deep breaths. The doctor will be right here.”

He _is_ taking deep breaths, he wants to say, it just isn’t _working_ — but, again, that’s more speaking than he can manage, and he has to settle for a quick nod of acknowledgement.

Rhodey returns moments later with a nurse – not even the same one from the food court, she probably hadn’t seen them after all – and they rush him back to his room. While they wait for Yinsen, the nurse gets him in bed and starts hooking him up to all those tubes and wires and sensors that he’s grown to hate. He almost doesn’t mind, this time: all the cares about is being able to _breathe_.

His vision has started to go grey and fuzzy by the time Yinsen arrives. He gives the nurse a bunch of instructions that Tony can’t follow, and she puts something in his IV, and then something else. Whatever she gives him does the trick. The chill in his vein spreads through his body, and as it dissipates, his heart rate and breathing begin to normalize.

Now that all his attention isn’t focused on trying to breathe, he looks up at Rhodey and Roberta. Roberta still looks worried, and Rhodey looks distraught and guilt-stricken. Before he can say anything to reassure them and possibly to get Rhodey out of some of the trouble he’s going to be in, Roberta grabs Rhodey’s arm and steers him out of the room.

“Come on, James, let’s let the doctor do his work. Tony needs to rest. And you and I need to _talk_.”

“I’m fine,” Tony protests weakly – but they’re already out the door.

Yinsen chuckles. “Looks like your friend is going to be in a lot of trouble. Aren’t you glad to have— hm, what would you say, diplomatic immunity? Lucky you.”

“Yeah, it’s real swell,” Tony says, with savage sarcasm. _Lucky me, I have no parents to get in trouble with, and everyone else feels sorry for me because I could kick the bucket at any second_. He doesn’t bother saying the rest of that: Yinsen’s bizarre bedside manner and inappropriate humor have proven immune to all rebukes. If the doctor’s genius wasn’t what was keeping Tony alive, Roberta probably would have throttled him.

By the time Yinsen leaves, Tony’s eyes are starting to drift closed. The drowsy fog of the drugs is familiar to him by now, and it’s being compounded by overexerting himself earlier.

He doesn’t fight it. What is there to stay awake for?


	4. Chapter 4

Tony had expected the funeral to give him some sort of… closure, or catharsis, or whatever. Mostly, it just sucks. Mercifully, no one forces him to give a eulogy.

He still has to sit through everyone else’s, though, and they all ring hollow to him. He stops listening after about ten minutes; an hour later, he has learned that it is, in fact, possible to be heartbroken and excruciatingly bored at the same time.

Even worse are the endless, repetitive condolences from people he only vaguely recognizes. Every sad smile and “I’m sorry” and “Your father was a good man” is as insincere as the next, and he knows they mean well, but he hates them all a little nonetheless. (The people who really care – Roberta, David, Rhodey, Trish – they don’t say anything at all, and Tony appreciates that.)

Worst of all is looking at the casket and knowing that it’s empty.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (WHOOPS adding this chapter out of order. Sorry, folks. Look at me, I'm such a pro :V)

The wake is supposed to be ‘family and friends,’ but Tony doesn’t know half the people here. It’s not even a real wake, technically, since it’s after the funeral and not before, but even death can be washed down with champagne and canapés, apparently. At least it’s less of a circus than the funeral.

Tony picks at his plate of crackers and lukewarm, sweating cheese and tries not to look at anyone. Rhodey shadows him while Roberta runs interference – they’re trying to be subtle about it, but Tony can tell. Under other circumstances the coddling might irritate him, but he’s too exhausted to feel much of anything.

“Tony, my boy. So, so sorry.” The man who’s cornered him is one of the people Tony doesn’t recognize, and he’s had more of the champagne than is really appropriate. “You probably don’t remember me,” Tony definitely doesn’t, “but your father and I were good friends, back in the day. Good friends. Used to go golfing every Sunday, you know, before he set up shop here in the Big Apple.” _No one actually calls it that_ , Tony thinks. He also thinks he’s heard this same feeble spiel at least thirty times already. “Terrible, terrible loss for all of us.” He claps Tony on the back. Tony flinches.

“Yeah. You lost your golfing buddy. That must be rough.”

There’s a beat of incredibly awkward silence, and then the man chuckles uncomfortably. That's when Roberta steps in, distracting him by engaging him in his loud reminiscings about fucking _golf_. He still hasn’t moved, though, and Tony doesn’t have enough room to squeeze by him and escape. He looks down at his cheese plate again, shrinking against the wall and feeling more and more claustrophobic with every second that goes by.

He’d ignore the obnoxious drunk if he could, but none of the other conversations going on around him are any better.

“…if there will be layoffs with the stock price dropping…” “…hadn’t seen him in years, it was such a shock…” “…pâté is incredible. Have you tried it?” “…by four, I have to catch my plane out and the traffic will be a mess.” “…didn’t even recover the body…”

There’s been an ache in his chest and a pressure building behind his eyes for a while now, but it’s that last one that triggers the avalanche.

He knows the specifications of every vehicle in the Starks’ personal fleet; knows their safety features and their failure conditions; knows exactly what forces are required to fragment a human body past recognition.

He knows all the calculations so well, and for once, he wishes he didn’t. He can’t stop himself: the terrible math starts unfolding itself in his brain, as easy as breathing, as easy as it’s always been. Numbers are absolute. That’s what he’s always loved about them. Math can’t be bargained with, and it can’t lie.

For once, he wishes it would.

If it could, it might not tell him that the last thing his father would have felt was an instant of heat hot enough to liquefy steel and boil his organs. That he wouldn’t have lived to feel his body torn apart by the explosion, but that couldn’t be counted a blessing because ‘at least it was quick’ meant nothing when you knew how long an instant could be. Tony knows. By the math, Tony had fallen for exactly one minute and forty-nine seconds, and it had felt longer than all the years of his life combined.

“Tony.” Rhodey puts his hand on Tony’s back. His voice is low and urgent. “You still in there, man?” Tony flicks his eyes up at Rhodey and replies with a small jerk of his head – he’s honestly not sure if it’s supposed to be a ‘yes’ or a ‘no.’ His mind is locked into the inevitable rhythm of the calculations, and there’s barely enough space in his head to remember how to breathe. “You need to get out of here?” This time, Tony manages a nod.

With his arm around Tony’s shoulders, Rhodey shoves his way past the drunk golfer and hustles him out of the room. Beyond the areas of the Rhodes’ house that have been temporarily designated public, the tightness in his chest eases slightly, but the machinery of his mind continues to churn away.

They pass a bathroom; Tony shrugs Rhodey’s arm off and practically lunges for the door. “I’ve gotta— I’m—” He chokes on the words, but it doesn’t matter because he doesn’t even know what he’d been trying to say. He slams the door shut, flicks on the fan, turns on the faucet, and hunches over the sink hoping that the white noise will drown out the ringing in his ears.

He’s not sure how long he stands there like that, staring at the water swirling down the drain. But eventually, the numbers stop, simply because he has run out of calculations. Like a computer completing its program.

And as the panic subsides, the numb exhaustion returns. Tony finally looks up into the mirror, and sees why everyone had watched his abrupt exit with pity rather than surprise or disapproval. He’s sheet-white, and his eyes are sunken and hollow in his gaunt face. The harsh black of his suit doesn’t help, either. It kind of looks like he died in the crash after all and somebody’s just pulled his sad corpse out of the freezer to fill out the guest list.

When he feels like he’s not going to scream or punch someone or pass out anymore, he unlocks the door and creeps out of the bathroom. Rhodey’s waiting for him in the hall, looking like he’s trying very hard not to look scared.

“I’m not going back out there,” Tony says.

Rhodey nods. “Yeah. I’ll tell mom. Can I get you anything?”

Tony shakes his head. “I’m just gonna… go lie down. Or something.”

“Sure. I’ll let you know when everybody’s cleared out, okay?”

“Okay.”

Rhodey gives him a long, searching look. Tony stares back blankly for a few seconds, then turns and walks down the hall towards his room.

He shucks off his black clothes and stuffs them into the far corner of his closet. It’s no way to treat an expensive suit, but if he has his way he’ll never wear the thing again. Finally, he curls up on the bed and tucks his arms against his chest, covering the glow of the implant. He thinks that now, when people ask him how he survived the plane crash, he’ll know how to answer:

Disasters have no survivors.


	6. Chapter 6

The camera turns on, jiggles a little as the person holding it find the right position, and then focuses. Maria is sitting on the couch with a book. She doesn’t look at the camera, but a small smile on her face suggests that she knows she’s being filmed.

“Go on, big guy,” Howard’s voice says from behind the camera, and a tiny Tony toddles into view, clutching some small metal contraption in his hands. He can’t be more than five.

Maria puts her book down, her smile widening. “What’s that, Tony?” she asks, and leans down to look at the gadget that he’s proudly holding aloft.

“It’s a new robot!” Tony proclaims. He beams at his mother, then looks over his shoulder to turn his smile on Howard, who chuckles.

Maria closes her book and sets it down. “What does this one do?”

“Watch!” Tony places the robot gently on one end of the coffee table, then moves to the other end, where he empties his pockets of a large and random assortment of items: a stubby pencil, some loose change, some skittles, a few nuts and screws, two plastic soda bottle caps, and about a dozen centimeter-square wooden blocks, among other things. Maria raises her eyebrows.

Tony trots back to the robot. “Okay,” he says decisively, and flips a switch to activate it. It whirs to life, and starts to patrol the coffee table. Every time it rolls near and edge, it stops, repositions itself, and continues on its way. Anything relatively large – Maria’s book, a decorative vase – it steers around, just as it had steered around the edges of the table. Once it starts to encounter smaller objects, like the miscellanea Tony had scattered everywhere, a little gripper claw picks up each one and slowly rotates it several times. Every object the robot encounters is examined and discarded - except for the small wooden cubes.

Each cube, once it has been selected, is ferried to an empty corner of the table, until the whole table has been scoured and all the cubes have been sorted out.

“It has a infared” Tony struggles a little on the ‘r’s there, but forges ahead undaunted, “transmitter and sensors for obstacle detection and a pattern recognition program to find the blocks,” he explains enthusiastically, the words tumbling out of his mouth in one breath like he’s been practicing them.

Howard chuckles again. “That’s my boy.” Maria glances up at the camera and smiles, her eyes twinkling.

“Wow,” she says to Tony. “Did you make it all by yourself?”

“Yeah!” Tony replies, picking up the robot and holding it out to her. “Except for when Daddy helped me with some of the soldering.”

Maria takes the robot gently; it whirrs in her hands and tries to grab one of her bangles. She laughs. “That’s amazing, Tony.”

“It sure is,” Howard says, and though his face isn’t visible, it’s easy to hear the pride in his voice.

 

 ...

 

On his bed in his new room in the Rhodes’s house, ten years later, Tony smiles.

“Watching old home videos?”

Tony looks up to see Rhodey in the doorway, and his smile turns wry. “Totally pathetic, right?”

He remembers that little robot. He remembers programming it and assembling it with his father beside him, encouraging him but never interfering. He wonders what happened to it. Probably got thrown out with the rest of his dad’s stuff when Stane moved in.

“I was gonna go with ‘maudlin,’ actually,” says Rhodey. “Good SAT word – you should remember that one.”

“Ha ha, very funny.” Tony closes the video, and drops the tablet in his lap. It is pretty pathetic – or maudlin, or whatever. Tony doesn’t think he cares. Watching the old movies hurts: a fierce, twisting pain in his heart that reminds him of the shrapnel from the plane crash. But the pain is okay. It’s better than the dull, aching hollowness that sits in the pit of his stomach day after day, swallowing him from the inside out.

He doesn’t say any of that. “What’s up?”

“Dinner’s in an hour. Mom wants to know if you want steak or chicken.”

“Uh— steak.”

“Got it.” Rhodey pauses. “You want to come down and hang out?”

Tony smirks. “Stuck on your physics homework again?”

“Damn. Busted,” Rhodey says with a grin.

Tony grins back, but it’s halfhearted: he knows Rhodey’s looking for an excuse to get him out of his room. He shrugs and replies, “…Maybe in a little bit.”

Rhodey’s smile dims. “Okay, sure.” Another awkward pause. “You gonna be okay?”

Tony rolls his eyes. “Yeah, I just need to practice being maudlin some more. I think I’ve almost got it down.”

“Alright, alright,” Rhodey laughs. “Just checking.” Tony wishes his humor didn’t sound so forced, but he’s glad that Rhodey doesn’t push it. “I’ll text you when mom’s serving.” 

“Thanks, Rhodey.”

“No problem, T.”

Rhodey leaves, and Tony pulls up another video file.


End file.
